Lola at the Coffee House

I don't know why, but the supermarkets near me rarely have containers of chicken livers, or even of livers and giblets, when they used to sell the small containers of chicken livers all of the time. So my last dog had to wait until I roasted a chicken and she got whatever giblets that were tucked inside it. Sometimes there wouldn't be a package of giblets and I'd feel awful that she got cheated because she loved them.

The puppy really began wagging his little tail after his first taste of chicken liver. I crumbled most of the small liver in with his canned food and kibble mixture, and poured some of the cooking liquid in with it, and this usually indifferent eater vacuumed up his dish. He's now working on a second portion. My budding gourmand.

I have Medicare which covers that sort of thing--I don't have to pay for it.

There's no reason to delay giving a patient the biopsy results--they are just sitting in the doctor's office.

Do they give you the results more immediately if they are positive for a malignancy--and indicate a need for further treatment?

And a dog who obviously eats well.

Did you know that dogs are more likely to steal food if the room is dark?

Confirmed: Dogs Sneak Food When People Aren't Looking

Man's best friend can understand our point of view, new study says.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/02/130218-dogs-animals-science-mind-smart/

Oy - I guess I get it, but it's hard to imagine.

I worked in hospitals for 23 years, and biopsies are read and perhaps reread within a few days. They call your primary, your primary (in my case the gynecologist) calls you. I heard my breast cancer needle biopsy was positive on late Thursday, after biopsy two days earlier. This was in a visit back to my home town of Los Angeles, where I saw doctor and accountant (hah), oh, and friends.

Called a surgeon in the new city I lived in seven hundred miles north (recommended), on Friday around 1 pm, she called me back a few hours later having just gotten the phone to work on a drive through the forest, made an appointment with me for the following Tuesday, and I had surgery on Thursday. This is a primo surgeon from Stanford. Before I left LA to drive north (major bad week, all planes not working in the US), I had time to scoot in and pick up my biopsy slide for the surgeon from the path department at the hospital. Oh, and the mammos.

I get they all are busy in the NHS, but is there no auxiliary patient liaison?

I'll grant that I wasn't timid in getting in to even get the biopsy after the uggy mammo of the day before, not timid both because I'd worked in hospitals and also that I had to get back north soon and the hospital was a known good one.

It is true care differs re access here. Now I'm a multi-clinic patient, the non insured end of the spectrum. I can still be heard.

You don't have Medicare?

That's right izzy. The US physician is "on the clock", like lawyers, and is happy for the patient to to tell him their life story which I wouldn't mind betting is a fairly common experience.

It's a poshness thing.

Yes, I didn't edit re that in time. I don't presently have medicaid, it's in process.
I am as it happens putting off two items of health interest until I get that, neither of them negligible but not scary stuff.

I'm not saying the u.s. system is great. I could go on and on about that. I also see problems re the nhs, that I'm mentioning (wait until July??????)
My pollyanna self wants what happened a couple of years ago for our site owner going to a hospital in Costa Rica - but fat chance for that. And maybe that situation isn't perfect either but I liked what I read.

Of course, they don't have big bills for waging wars.

No, that's not true. Physicians here are reimbursed (by the insurance carriers) for procedures--not for their time per se, and not on an hourly basis (like lawyers).
In my experience, most physicians are not good listeners, they'll either try to cut you off or they just seem disinterested. I've found female physicians to be a little better than the males, in terms of listening, unless I've just met a selective sample.

Neeps?

I've had a couple or three major idiot physicians, but a fair number who do listen to me. Maybe that is because of my savvy, but my savvy didn't help with the last two assholes who didn't read the chart. I've spent clinic time watching the scene with my ophthalmologist's clinical run. He's good. He spends equal time with the guys in orange with guards and the ninety or so year old whom he told me was one of his favorite patients when I mentioned her, and me who knows medical words but was scared silly of a needed surgery on the good eye. I am guessing he is salaried, like the rest of us were in our clinic days of yore.

ff--I have managed to find the reference in Jane Austen which your "expectation excitement valuation" regarding your lottery applications reminded me of.

As some attentive readers will know, I have been giving the works of Ms Austen a closer look over for the last couple of months than I did when I first read them many years ago. My medical adviser thought it might my help to deal with my ADD problem.

I will quote the relevant sentences tomorrow in order to show how well Ms Austen understood the position you took and the condition which it is indicative of.

I had always understood that Doctors Kildare and Gillespie were so uncommonly solicitous of their patient's concerns that they had to be "on the clock" in one guise or another. Possibly one which was beyond the wit of the ailing parties.

Excuse you!

Knocking you off to get the doe, more like it. When it runs out, they leave, plain and simple.

Bernie once ate an anchovy, by accident at the bottom of a bowl of salad. He had to leave the restaurant immediately and threw up in the taxi on the way back to our apartment. He really can't stand the sight or smell, much less the taste of sea food. No joke.

I stayed at the restaurant with our friends and felt sorry for the poor chap.

Everything's on the menu here, dear McTag.

Now wait a mintue. I like those veges.................

There must be something very physiologically deep in such tastes. I love, anchovies, herring, sardines, virtually all fish, but my wife can't stand to even be around them. The same thing with hot chilis; I've never met one I didn't love, but they literally "hurt" her.

artichokes are an acquired tastse that, once acquired, becomes an obsession. We only get really fresh artichokes in limited times of the year and we wait for those days of happy eating. Artichokes with sweet butter, I am a happy diner.
Brocolli, not so much.

Her gustatory experiences were , perhaps limited as a child. (OR, like some, certain veggies were "overserved by mom".
My sense of approach/avoidance towards brocolli was so developed. Cole veggies were a staple in my parents home.

chilis were something else. You were "mas macho" if you could eat a raw habenero or scotch bonnet.

I like chilis too, but I like the Tex/Mex way of serving them as a steamed sheet atop a normal meat entre. (I had that at a friends place in New Mexico and loved it). They served a chicken verde thing topped with a sheet of a large Sandia pepper and a fried egg.